This weekend has seen the brutal massacre of 17 unarmed Palestinian demonstrators who when marching in protest at the theft of their land and the land of their ancestors, were shot at with machine guns, drones and tanks. It is difficult to think of a moment in the 21st century when such firepower was used against those armed only with slogans and rage.

Under the definition of ‘mass shooting’, one should show the following image of “Israeli” occupiers shooting a man in the back as he ran in the other direction.

Far from the criminality of a lone drug riddled lunatic, the mass shooting of Palestinians in Gaza is the work of an illegally nuclear armed regime which justifies the slaughter of Palestinians on a basis that can only be described as collective political lunacy.

And yet, few in the United States are condemning the mass shooting of Palestinians. Instead they are arguing with passion about whether to burn a hole in one of the most sacred parts of their own constitution, the second amendment of the US Bill of Rights which allows American citizens to legally arm themselves in order to fight ternary and threats to their safety.

In the streets of Gaza, Palestinians are screaming because they have no rights. They do not have the right to statehood, of ownership over their ancient land that was brutally stolen from them in the Nakba, they do not have the right to protest nor the right to resist. Many do not even have the fundamental right to clean drinking water and fresh food.

The Tel Aviv regime instead massacres and mutilates them. The regime shoots off the foot of a boy playing football on a beach. The regime slaughters a disabled man who lost had previously lost his legs in another assault on Gaza. The regime tortures and shackles a young girl defending her family, including her brother who was shot in the head, from vicious assaults by soldiers of the regime. And yet today in the US, a generation of incompetent individuals, victims themselves of a regressive education system, want to take away the rights they have while in Palestine children are fighting for their eternal rights for their fathers, grandfathers and also for future generations.

The ridiculous charade of the so-called March for Life in Washington D.C. where American youths living in the wealthiest country in the world march to have their rights taken away, contrasts sharply with the genuine March of Return in Palestine where those whose rights have been taken away at gunpoint are pleading to God and to the rest of the world, to have even some of their rights restored.

The US is the chief source of foreign weapons for the “Israeli” regime. If Americans truly wanted a ‘march for life’ they would march against their government’s reckless arming of the most dangerous regime in modern history. Instead, they are marching to have their own rights taken away. Such madness defies all logic and is a symptom of the wider intellectual and moral breakdown in American society.

As former Palestinian President Yasser Afafat said to the UN,

“Today I come bearing an olive branch in one hand, and the freedom fighter’s gun in the other. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. I repeat, do not let the olive branch fall from my hand”.

For the insolent youth of the US, they offer no olive branches to Palestine yet seek to castrate their own ability to fight for freedom, all the while the US military rapes the freedom and dignity of peoples throughout the world by waging aggressive war and promoting illegal occupation.